Catch the Lightning (27 page)

The problems weren’t obvious at first. The humans Rhon created looked odd, with red eyes and glittering black hair, but that was mild compared to what genetic fiddling had produced in some colonies. Almost everything went as anticipated. His creations did indeed have the hoped for combination of increased pain tolerance and enhanced KAB. Just one unexpected twist turned up; their KAB detected only signals produced by pain. At the same time, their brain was receiving the order increase pain tolerance—so it routed the pain signals to its orgiastic centers.

That one glitch changed interstellar history.

When Rhon realized what happened, he understood the implications far better than the well-meaning committees regulating his work. His insistence that these new humans be killed appalled the ethics boards. While the debate raged, Rhon’s creations—the soon-to-be Aristos—murdered Rhon, stole or destroyed his records, and set out on their own.

A race with no qualms about causing human suffering can wreak havoc in a gender universe. Only after the Aristos reached a population of several thousand, when they began to “step on each other’s toes,” did their expansion slow. But those few thousand, within a space of decades, founded a brutal empire.

They also continued Rhon’s work, trying to create super-empaths. Why? The stronger the empath, the stronger the signal that person’s pain sends, and so the more intense the pleasure response it evokes in an Aristo. They breed empaths for sensitivity and beauty, call them “providers,” and seek them with a drive as strong as their need to eat or sleep.

Eventually they succeeded in their ultimate goal: they created two Rhon telepaths, a male and female for breeding. The youth, when he realized his future, killed himself. The female reached adulthood and escaped, murdering her creators to avenge her mate. She also destroyed every record she could find of the work that led to her birth. To this day she is the only known Rhon psion successfully created in the lab.

That woman was Althor’s grandmother.

Jag. I thought. That’s a terrible story.

Yes
, the Jag answered.

Althor’s parents are so closely related. He’s lucky he turned out normal
.

The Jag paused.
He does have a chromosomal abnormality. An extra Y chromosome
.

You mean he’s XYY?

Yes.

Don’t people with extra sex chromosomes have problems?
I thought of the children we hoped to have.
Like sterility?

XYY males are not infertile. Nor do they pass the extra Y to their offspring.

But?

They tend to be taller on average.

That’s all?

The Jag paused.
As a group, they are below average in intelligence
.

Althor isn’t
. He was a rocket scientist, in fact, or a rocket engineer.

You are correct. Most Kyle operators are above average, due to their extra neural structures.

Is that all that’s different about him?

The Jag paused again.
A significantly high proportion of human males in prisons tend to have the XYYgenotype, particularly the population above six feet tall
.

A half-remembered news report I had heard in my own universe came back to me.
Because they’re more aggressive. More violent.

Yes.

Althor isn’t that way.
I knew as soon as I said it that it wasn’t true. When the Jag didn’t respond, I said,
He’s not criminally violent
.

No. He’s not. It isn’t all genetics, either. Upbringing, personality, and environment all affect personality development.

Why are you telling me this?

A number of the simulations I have constructed to model your future yield the following as a solution: you will find the Pilot’s aggressive tendencies unacceptable.

You think I’m going to walk out on him
.

Yes
.

Then you’re using the wrong data
.

My data sets for you are small
, the Jag agreed.
I augmented them by extrapolating behavior patterns developed from algorithms applied to gamma humanoid females witk a phenotype that approaches yours.

Does that mean you guessed, based on what I look like?

Essentially.

Who did you compare me to?

You appear Raylican. So I extrapolated behaviors of females from the Ruby Dynasty. However, models incorporating these data become unstable. In fact, the most stable simulations employ patterns opposed to those of a Raylican female. Such a woman would seek a lack of aggression in the male. You appear to seek the opposite.

I blinked.
I never thought about it that way before
.

Given your small size and nonaggressive nature, combined with the subcultures that have formed your environment, your criteria for mate selection are logical
.

Then you know I won’t dump Althor
.

I will add your input on this matter to my models
. Its response had a curious sense of lightening, like relief. It made me wonder just how far the Jag would go to protect its pilot.

Ming opened the door onto a panorama of stars: rubies, topazes, sapphires, opals. I stood with her in the doorway of the Observation Deck. Only the wall behind us was opaque; the rest of the room was dichromesh glass, a bubble extending “below” the wheel of the station. A crystalline pulpit stood across the chamber, silhouetted against the starscape. A lacquer box sat on it, and a vase with a rose. Next to them a book lay open, a real book, paper and leather, an antique. I had requested Ming use it because her electronic holobook didn’t feel right to me for this ceremony.

People filled the chamber, standing around and talking. Kabatu was there, wearing a blue jumpsuit like Ming’s, with NASA and Allied Worlds shoulder patches. Stonehedge stood near the pulpit, also in uniform, with medals on his chest. Gold glimmered on his clothes like reflected starlight.

Then I realized the glimmer didn’t come from the stars. The scene had so overwhelmed me, and Althor looked so different, that it was a moment before I realized he was standing next to Stonehedge. The metallic,.gold cloth of his uniform glistened. It was also holographic, creating sparkles of gold light that gave it a shimmering depth. The style was simple, a long-sleeved pullover with horizontal ribbing across his chest that made his shoulders look even broader, and pants with a line of darker gold running down the outer seam of each leg. The pants tucked into knee-high gold boots polished to a mirror shine. A sword hung at his waist, sheathed in gold, its point arcing back in a curve.

As Ming walked with me into the chamber, Althor glanced in our direction and did a double take. He looked like I felt: dazed. This had all happened so fast. Ming took me over to him, then went to stand behind the pulpit. Althor kept staring at me, until finally Stonehedge pushed him. Blinking, Althor stepped in front of the pulpit. When Ming cleared her throat, he and I stopped looking at each other and turned to her.

It had taken Ming and me a long time to find a ceremony I recognized. We finally dug up a Catholic wedding over three hundred and fifty years old, dated even by my standards. It surprised me that she could read Mass; I didn’t know then about the charter of the Allied Worlds Interfaith Council, which provides for Inspace Chaplains, religious leaders who serve the diverse populations of space habitats and colonies, where access to well-established religious communities isn’t yet available.

We sent the ceremony to the Jag for Althor’s approval. Although the Jag sent back his agreement, I suspected Althor never actually saw it. I had felt his mind slumbering as the Jag worked on him.

Althor and I stood in front of the pulpit, bewildered, trying to pay attention while Ming read the ceremony. I thought of hbme, of the people I would have liked to share this day with, of Manuel and my mother.

“Tina?” Ming said.

I suddenly became aware the' ceremony had stopped. “Yes?” She tilted her head at Stonehedge. “He won’t go with the term.”

“It’s illegal,” Stonehedge said, his voice low enough so it didn’t carry to our audience.

“Tina picked it,” Althor said. “If this ceremony is the one the Jag received, then it was her choice.”

Stonehedge scowled at him. “You didn’t read your own wedding ceremony?”

“I couldn’t,” Althor said. “The Jag just woke me up.”

“Max, it was her choice,” Ming said. “She insisted, in fact.”

“It’s illegal,” he said. “We’re pushing the law as it is, claiming we’re her guardians. I can’t authorize a lifetime term for a seventeen-year-old.”

“Don’t you all marry for life?” I asked.

“Not at your age,” Stonehedge said. “You can set up a ten-year contract, maximum. By the time the renewal comes around, you’ll be of legal age to decide if you want to spend the rest of your life with this man.”

“I think we should let them do it,” Ming said. “The legal definitions don’t apply to this situation.”

Stonehedge’s exasperation sparked in the air. But when Ming gave him a questioning look, he waved his hand. “Go on. Finish.”

She backed up a few lines. “In sickness and in health.”

“In sickness and in health,” Althor repeated.

“As long as we both shall live.”

“As long as we both shall live.”

After I repeated the vows, Ming went on. She read the passage for exchanging rings even though Althor and I had none to give each other. Then she opened the lacquer box—and took out a gleaming gold band. As my mouth fell open, she handed it to Althor.

Althor blinked at the ring. “What do I do?”

Ming smiled. “Say, ‘With this ring I thee wed, and plight unto thee my troth.’”

His face blanked into computer mode. “I do not find this phrase.” He came back to normal. “What is ‘pleat into thee trough’?”

“Good question,” Stonehenge muttered. “At least he didn’t say ‘bleat.’” When Ming gave him a sharp glance, he held up his hand as if to fend her off.

“ ‘Plight unto thee my troth,’” she told Althor. “It means you pledge to marry her. You put the ring on the third finger of her left hand.”

Althor slid the ring onto my finger. “With this ring, I pleat unto thee my truth.”

I put my hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh. Ming gave me a second ring, one made from soft gold metal. Eighteen-karat gold, as it turns out. I swallowed, stunned by these beautiful gifts they were giving us.

“Thank you,” I said. Althor nodded his thanks as well, a curl of hair falling in his eyes.

I slid the ring onto his finger. He wiggled his hand, hinging it back and forth, examining the gold band. When he finished, Ming read the Mass, and more blessings and prayers. As the station rotated, Athena moved past our view like a stately goddess. It all had a dreamlike quality, as if We were floating through stardust.

When Ming started the final blessing, Althor must have realized she was almost done. While she was in the middle of a sentence, he turned, put his arms around my waist, and kissed me. For a moment, I was too starded to react. Then I kissed him back.

“Don’t mind us,” Stonehedge said.

Ming laughed softly. “I guess we can skip the rest. You may kiss the bride.”

After that, everything blurred. Stonehenge introduced us to the guests: scientists, administrators, colonists, military personnel. All the time the stars wheeled by outside the bubble, their glorious parade hypnotic in its immensity. The haze from Althor’s. uniform blended with the golden haze of exhaustion my mind created, until I was moving through a dazed golden fog.

Eventually Kabatu rescued us, spiriting us off to a quiet chamber with a bench running around the wall and a console table in the center. After he left, we sank down on the bench together.

“Finally,” Althor said. “I never know what to say at formal things like that.”

I laughed. “You didn’t need to say anything. They all just wanted to look at you.”

His voice softened. “When I first saw you, with Nancy Ming, the light from the doorway behind you was making a halo around your body.” He rubbed the lace of my dress. “And the way this sparkles—it was unreal. You looked like an angel.”

“I thought the same about you.”

“That I looked like an angel?” He laughed. “I’ve been called many names, but never that.”

I smiled. “That you look like a hero.”

“Hardly.”.

“You do to me.”

“That’s why they make us wear these clown suits.” He motioned at his clothes. “ISC uses computer simulations and psychologists to design our dress uniforms.”

I traced the curve of his sword. “Even this?”

“Actually, that’s mine. I inherited it. It’s a ceremonial sword from the Abaj Tacalique. They gave it to my grandfather at his wedding to my grandmother.”

I stared at him. “Abaj Takalik? That’s a Maya city. Near Guatemala. Its ruins are two thousand years old.”

“A city?” His mouth opened. “The Abaj I know is a fraternity formed six thousand years ago to guard the Ruby Dynasty. Now they’re sworn to protect my family.”

“Bodyguards?”

He nodded. “It’s primarily a ceremonial position. My parents have Jagernauts as bodyguards. But the Abaj still swear fealty to the Ruby Dynasty.” Dryly he added, “Even though we haven’t ruled anything for five thousand years.”

“The Jag told me about the psibernet, how it needs your family.”

“It takes three Keys to power it. My mother is the eldest, liaison to the Assembly. My Uncle Kelric is the military Key. He also commands the Imperial fleet.” He paused. “The third Key, my grandfather, died about fifty years ago. My father should have taken his place. But the Traders captured the third Lock.”

“How can you capture a lock?”

He smiled. “It’s a control base, actually. My father would link into the power center of the web there. The Traders can’t use it because they have no Rhon psions, but they don’t want us to have it either.”

At the time I didn’t connect what Althor was telling me with what Ming had told me earlier about the exchange of prisoners that freed Althor’s father after the last war. That exchange took place before the Trader officials involved knew their military had captured a Lock. I’ve often wondered what they would have done had they realized they possessed both a Lock and a Key. Would they have refused to give up Althor’s father, even though the youth they were trading him for was their future emperor? “You should build another Lock,” I said.